


Supermarket Flowers

by taeminki



Category: A.C.E (Beat Interactive Band)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-09
Updated: 2017-09-09
Packaged: 2018-12-25 15:23:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12038721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taeminki/pseuds/taeminki
Summary: falling in love with a flower that doesn't grow in your garden is a true definition of pain, because you only have two choices:; leave it behind, and let it grow without you, or; take it with you, and watch it die slowly in your palms.





	Supermarket Flowers

**Author's Note:**

> ♪ incomparable -monsta x

; maybe, maybe not.

 

The first flower Seyoon fell in love with was a golden rose.

It wasn't real, of course, though Seyoon believed, for a long while, that it was. He didn't understand that the flowers on fabric were sewn. He didn't understand that they were the same material as whatever jacket or dress or jeans they decorated. He thought the rose that occasionally showed on his mother's thigh was real. It didn't matter that it was golden, or that it was flat, or that it was on his mother's jeans-- it was the realest flower he had ever seen. He fell in love with it when his head could barely reach it, and his cheek would cover it as he lay down to sleep. It wasn't often that his mother wore those pants, as they were a gift from Seyoon's father and that was a time that the woman just wanted to forget. However, Seyoon would find himself missing the rose when he remembered he hadn't seen it for a while, and he would place his hand on the part of her thigh where the rose reached, and he would pout up at the woman and ask, "Mommy, where's the rose?" and he would be near to tears because damn, he loved that flower. His mother's heart broke for him, and she would leave for a moment to pull on the jeans, and she would deal with Seyoon clinging to her leg all day, cheek and ear against the rough golden rose.

One day, she ripped the jeans. Her thighs were close together, and her pants tore at the seam inside of her left leg. They were uncomfortable to wear and-- well-- the woman wasn't great at sewing. What she could do, though, was cut; so she cut out the flower, and she handed it to Seyoon, and she told him "Take good care of that rose, Seyoon," and he was confused because it was no longer attached to a long length of black fabric, but he told his mother "Okay!" and he carried the rose with him every day-- in his pocket, in his backpack, pinned to his shirt, wherever he could have it.

"Mom, is this rose real?" Seyoon asked one day. He was five years old and he was starting to doubt that the flower on his chest was real. He'd heard some people in his class talk of flowers, and how they died quickly if they didn't have water and sunlight and soil and roots. Seyoon was shown each part of a flower in class, and he realized his flower didn't have any of those parts except for the petals, but the petals weren't three dimensional, like his teacher described, and they weren't soft to the touch. They were rough-- exactly what a rose's petals shouldn't be.

"No, sweetie. It's just fabric," the woman said, barely sparing Seyoon a glance as she washed dishes with her withered hands. Seyoon turned the flower in his palms. He thought he would be upset that the flower wasn't real, but oddly, he wasn't. He kind of liked the flower more, knowing that it wouldn't die. Even though it had been cut away from everything it was used to being attached to, it continued to survive-- and thrive, even. It looked just the way it had when his mother received it years ago, albeit a little faded and with one little, tiny rip in the golden stitches-- but that was only because Seyoon had caught it on the pin as he was trying to take it off of his shirt.

"I'll get you a real rose if you'd like, sweetie," his mother broke the silence they'd fallen into after a while, when she had washed all of the plates she was working on and moved on to bowls. There weren't many things left in the sink-- and perhaps it Seyoon hurried and finished up his homework, he could help her. She wouldn't let him help until he was done with his homework, but suddenly he was faced with another problem and he couldn't even focus on his math anymore.

A real rose. Seyoon thought about it. A real rose. He had never seen one in front of him before. He had seen pictures, now, and he'd even seen one from far away, with his mother was walking him down the sidewalk and he spotted a flower shop across the street. He had never gotten to hold one, though, or smell one. He was curious, but was he curious _enough?_  A girl in his class told him it was sad when flowers died, because humans pick them out of love but end up killing them, because they selfishly rip them away from everything they need to survive just because they were pretty. Could Seyoon do that to a flower?

 

; maybe, maybe not.

 

When Seyoon grew out of roses, it was because he started to date a girl who loved tulips.

He was in the tenth grade when he found his first love, a foreign girl called Jessica that had short hair, brown skin, and the prettiest smile Seyoon would ever grow to see. Seyoon got a lot of looks for having her on his arm, but he didn't care a bit. When most of his friends walked away, and she started to push him away, telling him "I'm chasing away all of the people you love," Seyoon took her by the shoulders and carefully told her "I love you. If they don't accept you, I don't want to be around them."

Her smile was one of Seyoon's favorite things about her-- one of his favorite things in general, because it was soft and bright and it reminded Seyoon of the smoothness of the flower petals that she loved. Seyoon spoiled her with tulips-- the lilac ones that she adored. They looked beautiful over his ear, in her hair, just resting in their palms. Seyoon would decorate her with them-- lay petals across her arms just to pass some of the countless hours they spent together, those hours where they had nothing to talk about or were too tired to form words. He lay whole flowers across her legs or tulips across her stomach, and she was confused but amused by his task. He would take pictures of her; after all, he wanted to be a photographer, and making everything perfect in a shot was something he cherished and practiced. She became his muse very quickly-- her, and her lilac tulips.

First loves weren't supposed to last the longest, but they made it through high school. Second year all the way to graduation, where Seyoon greeted her with a bouquet of lilac tulips and she pulled three pink ones from behind her back for him. They fell in love over those tulips and tough times-- fought past nasty words and came out intact, hand-in-hand. Seyoon thought they were invincible.

 

; maybe, maybe not.

 

Seyoon was hooked on tulips for a long time, even after his first love had left him for England and didn't look back. Long distance was too hard, she said, and I'm so sorry, she said, but I can't be stuck in Korea, where no one really accepts me. I have to move on, she told him, I have to go somewhere else and do greater things and become the artist I've always wanted to become, and Seyoon loved her so much that he couldn't bring himself to be selfish, and he couldn't go with her because England just wasn't his calling. He wanted to stay in Korea; he didn't want to experience something that new. Their dreams fought their love; and their dreams won.

Seyoon's mother told him to get over tulips. He had to move on to a new flower-- a new garden, if he wished, but Seyoon couldn't forget the beautiful curve of the tulips' petals, or the beautiful color of its skin. He bought lilac tulips and photographed them in front of his headboard and he missed her so much. Jessica was one of the best people he had ever met; she was delicate and fun. She rolled her eyes a lot and she absolutely loved to kiss Seyoon-- soft kisses that Seyoon adored, that he would never feel again. Her lips were like her petals; they were sticky without leaving behind the same feeling of residue, and they were often a different temperature than Seyoon's. She was floral, and she smelled of natural beauty; she was beautiful, and Seyoon didn't think he would ever overcome his heartbreak in her wake.

He slowly collected a bouquet of tulips, each one fading into a memory when a new one came along, but none of them were her. None of them were the foreign lilac color that she was; they were all plain, and white, but Seyoon felt bad for tucking them away so quickly. He collected his tulips in a vase made up of paper-- and their stems cried words into the lines of the vase-- Solji, Kyunghwan, Yoonah, Kyerim, Sooyo, Hyeri, Sojin, and more, and more. Seyoon looked at his vase of tulips in shame-- ashamed that he had collected so many in one year, ashamed that he had thrown them away. Their stems cried so much that their names started to blur, and Seyoon could hardly tell the apart anymore. They all looked the same; they all looked like a sea of white petals that would never, ever be lilac, no matter how much white built up.

Seyoon had a feeling he would never truly get over tulips. He had tainted their beauty with his heartbreak, but he still loved them. He may not love every tulip out there; he may look away when he saw white tulips, and he may feel like purchasing the lilac ones when he came across them, but he tried to feel neutral toward them altogether. He tried; he _tried_. Eventually, he would succeed.

 

; maybe, maybe not.

 

Seyoon finally moved on to a new flower then he was twenty-two years old and moving into an apartment after seeing an ad for _Roommate Needed_. He was sick of living his life on campus, wanting some kind of escape from college life, even if it was just a drive to his apartment before he had to start researching, or working out mathematical equations. He knocked on the door of his new apartment and greeted the man he would be staying with. He introduced himself as Kim Byeongkwan, with a smile over his lips and his eyes. He had white hair, white skin, and a pretty red flower over his ear. Before Seyoon could think of telling Byeongkwan his name, he gestured to the flower, and he asked, "What kind of flower is that?"

"It's a carnation. They're my favorites."

Seyoon got comfortable after apologizing for being rude and not introducing himself before asking questions-- he was just really interested in flowers, and he couldn't pinpoint the beautiful flower draping over his ear. Byeongkwan said it was no problem, and he was glad Seyoon liked flowers because he had quite a few growing in pots around the house, and he didn't mind the immediate question at all-- in fact, he'd made a good first impression already. Seyoon looked at all of his potted flowers and thought it was such a pretty way to keep a flower. He knew of the concept, of course, but he had never thought about it in depth; he had never thought of buying a flower as a seed, or digging it up with its roots and taking it home to flourish. He could tuck it under his window, where it would get sunlight in the morning and a beautiful view of the night, where he could water it and admire it and sit and read to it. He never thought of loving a flower in such a way that he could keep it and not have to kill it.

Seyoon liked Byeongkwan already.

It was because of Byeongkwan that Seyoon forgot about tulips. They still lay deep in his heart somewhere, and they tucked themselves into the back of his mind, too, but carnations took over. His heart and mind blossomed with the thought of red carnations. He saw them in his room-- "I can take them out if you want to," Byeongkwan had offered, but no, no, "I really like them;" so they stay cozy on his window sill, and Seyoon watered them frequently, and he read with them in the afternoons, when he classes came to an end. He studied under their comfort and often fell asleep under their gentle whispers. They became his favorite flowers.

Soon enough, Byeongkwan was one of his favorites, too.

Seyoon had never been in love with a man before, but he had no qualms about Byeongkwan being his first-- and, a year into their relationship as best friends, Seyoon started to think about how much he would love if Byeongkwan was also his last. Byeongkwan and Seyoon were made for each other-- to be friends if nothing else. They matched perfectly-- on the quiet side versus on the crazy side-- flowers pairing with flowers-- happiness and tainted happiness and everything that contradicted but fit together. They benefited each other in a way that their extremes balanced out, and their minors fit perfectly together-- just like their hands, fingers overlapping fingers and shy smiles resonating as they started-- as they started to exchange roses and kisses, as they started going on gentle dates-- as they tucked each other into pots full of soil and kept each other without killing each other.

Seyoon felt so grateful that he could live in a world where two flowers could fall in love.

 

; maybe, maybe not

 

Seyoon had never seen a flower bleed before. It was a foreign concept to him, but it happened right in front of his eyes. Someone ran by his beautiful red carnation and cut into its stem. A deeper color of red poured out of its green side, and it collapsed, its little leaf folding over its stem to hold the red gushing from its side. Seyoon caught his carnation as he collapsed; he panicked, and he cried, and he fumbled for his phone and scream "My boyfriend! He-- he's been stabbed!" and Byeongkwan started to fade in his arms, blood flowing out of his side, soaking into Seyoon's pants. He couldn't even speak, his flower. All the red was draining from him, and soon, before an ambulance could even get to him, he was a white soul.

Seyoon had never been to a flower's funeral before. He knew flowers died, but he never knew them to die before they had really even blossomed. He cried at the funeral of his red carnation-- now white. He sobbed away the remnants of his heart, which had already been broken once. He had even thought it shattered, back then, but thinking about it now, he knew it hadn't. His broken heart hadn't felt like this. His heart fell apart; it shattered into the tiniest of pieces, and it settled to a pile of dust at the base of his chest. Seyoon fell to his knees in front of his buried flower. He thought about the cycle of flowers, how they began as a seed in the ground, how the blossomed out of dirt and sucked in the beauty of sunlight and oxygen. He thought about how his flower was buried in the dirt, but how he wouldn't blossom again-- because Byeongkwan wasn't really a flower, he was a person, and he was a dead person that would never hug, or kiss, or love Seyoon again.

Red carnations never became white carnations after his favorite flower had bled away all of its color. Seyoon never rebounded again; he never fell in love with another flower. He stopped watering the ones in his apartment; he watched them wither and die, and hated that such a flawless plan of loving a flower and allowing it to live could be ruined by such a careless act. He hated that he lived in a world where he couldn't love a flower without some sort of morbid consequence.

Twenty-seven years of trying to love flowers in some perfect, flawless way, and Seyoon decided he was done trying.

 

; ~~maybe, maybe not~~.


End file.
